ELECTION '96.

Lining Up With The Revolution

Candidates Try To Identify With House Republicans

February 22, 1996|By Michael Tackett, Tribune Staff Writer.

NASHUA, N.H. — In some respects, it just sounds like fighting. Though it might seem difficult to believe at times, with the searing rhetoric and the slash-and-burn advertising that primaries deliver, one of the largely untold stories of the Republican presidential campaign is how few major differences there are among the candidates.

To be sure, they take profoundly different courses on some issues like trade and other aspects of the economy. There is a bright line of distinction between Pat Buchanan and Sen. Bob Dole and Lamar Alexander, with Buchanan alone in assailing the global marketplace.

But all of them agree with the overarching issues of a more limited role for the federal government and balancing the budget, and each signed off on every provision of the House Republicans' "Contract with America." And they all support some form of a "flatter, fairer, simpler" flat tax. Each opposes abortion, though none with Buchanan's zeal.

The primaries seem so divisive because the candidates are fighting hard at the margins, trying to make the case to voters that they are truly different, that they are engaged in a battle for the "soul of the Republican Party."

But they are all fighting for membership in the same club, and each would like to be cast as the steward of the Republican congressional revolution set in motion in 1994.

Linda DiVall, a pollster who worked for the presidential campaign of Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, said "the revolution is continuing" and the current battle between Dole, Buchanan and Alexander will test the extent to which it can continue.

"Buchanan represents the angry white male vote. Lamar Alexander represents the forgotten and quiet part of the Republican constituency, the moderate Republicans," DiVall said. "The big question of moderates is whether they will get up and get energized. And Bob Dole is the last of . . . the status-quo wing of the party."

But so far none of the candidates has been able to fashion the congressional victories into his own mandate as he pursues the White House. For one thing, House members are concentrating on their own affairs trying to complete the agenda items in the "Contract" and haven't been major participants in the presidential race.

They also realize that, almost regardless of what happens in the House, it is the presidential nominee who sets the party's agenda in the general election.

"I think we are just in a time period where we are not going to see that yet," said Republican pollster Ed Goeas. "The thing that everyone is missing--(with) all the media talking about division--there is one thing that unites the Republican Party and that is leaner, more effective government. You aren't hearing that discussed in the primary because all of our candidates are the same on that issue. That's what the Reagan revolution was all about.

"Right now we are focused on where there are differences between the candidates. The problem is that there's not a dime's worth of difference between any of our candidates on these issues," he said. "This is the worst period of time for the out party."

In a recent survey for 20 newly elected House Republicans, Goeas said that 82 percent of Republicans said they wanted the Republican nominee to support the "Contract."

The candidate best positioned to carry the mantle of the House Republicans, Gramm, already has dropped from the race. He tried to argue that he was the ideological soul mate of the House Republicans, but that message and the rest of his campaign fell stunningly flat with voters.

Dole mentions the Republican revolution often, but even among House Republicans there has been a lingering suspicion about how committed he was to their agenda. Buchanan claims to be the 74th member of the freshman class of Republicans, but his agenda in many respects is anathema to the free-market ethos that guides House leaders such as Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia and Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas.

Alexander frequently praises Gingrich and says that he believes Congress should have adopted the House's version of the federal budget, and will in coming days be arguing that he is more in sync with the "outsiders" first elected in 1994 on a platform of, among other things, term limits.

But at least one analyst believes that continuing the revolution has not been extensively discussed because much of what it wrought is unpopular with the majority of Americans.

Curtis Gans, director of the non-partisan Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, contended that the congressional revolution "way exceeded its mandate and wasn't very popular.

"The only part that the public bought into was a balanced budget, which is a given in the GOP."

Gans, who only two years ago predicted a political realignment--at least in the South--following the Republican sweep, now says that congressional Republicans face threats in at least 20 districts outside the South, where they had made gains in 1994, because their agenda is not popular.